Thanks for all of your feedback! Since I have an entire year to experiment with this, then why not use 1 month in January to see how it goes. I'm in the early stages of interviewing several companies. After a few rounds of phone and onsite interviews, paperwork, background check, and other usual stuff, it can easily burn the entire month of January before I get back on the saddle. Also it's the holidays. I might be lucky and start in mid January. But having been through many interview process, it will more likely be late January to end of January or even early February before the dust settles. So that gives me 3-5 weeks. I know that's extremely small sample points! My point is now that I know the errors of my ways(not cutting losses fast enough and doing countertrend trades), I need to see for myself that I can follow those rules the next 3 - 5 weeks. If so then I should be making 6x what I normally make in a month trading(because my losses cut deep into my profits). If I'm not seeing those kinds of results then I will know I'm still got a LONG LONG way to go! Then I'll take that job and gradually improve and tweak my trading. I'm a believer in processes. If you can follow the right process and not worry about money etc. then in the long run you will be ahead. Assuming the process you've created are the good ones. I can also always trade longer term while holding down a job. But my there's a lot of intraday noise that i have to avoid looking at if I'm going to do longer term swing trading. Many of my mistakes come down to mixing the timeframes. I look at the daily chart then I enter on the intraday chart. Then intraday it goes against me so I panic and get out at a HUGE LOSS from an intraday point of view. Then the next day it zooms up a WHOLE LOT like my daily chart said it would do. Maybe my timing is slightly off for daily trading. I think the Holy Grail is to use the intraday weakness and time it just right and get in at the right spot. Then the next day it goes back up as the daily chart would show so. That way I don't get shaken out by the intraday volatility. For swing trading I have to trade significantly smaller and probably have to invest the time to build systems to automate that. That's a huge investment in time and energy. Just some thoughts.
As jinxu said, if you have any doubt, you are not ready for 2). We have very similar situations except I am about 10-15 years ahead of you. I am a full time trader since 2010 trading my own funds. Since 2010, the bulk of my income came from trading, but I don't trade for a living. There is a distinct difference: If you don't trade for a living, trading becomes fun and somewhat pressure free. You can explore different trading methodologies and schemes without the fear of losing. Do hang around and learn from the professional traders and expert retail traders here. There are lots of them around, after a while you can tell who is real and who is not. I am not one of them, just a mom and pop retail trader having fun. Though none of them gave out any trading recipes, it is amazing how much I learned and improved from reading and trying out all the different trading philosophies, principles mentioned. Take care.
I'm still fielding calls from recruiters. Kind of disappointed today that I failed to follow my rules. I did a few good trades and again one bad one. But this time the bad trade wasn't horrendously bad. Just bad. Still disappointed. Well, probably means I should get that job. I shouldn't be complaining since most likely I will not make as much trading(at this rate at least) as my job. Or worse yet end up the year negative. Until I can beat my job pay + benefits by multiple factors then it's too risky to trade fulltime.... The upside is that I have a bunch of work waiting for me to get done and get paid for. I've been doing side consulting and I have deliverables that are due. Getting paid. I guess my trading skills is not to the same level as my other skills. Disappointed. But gotta face reality. Now I can trade in the morning then go to work and collect a steady paycheck.
Well, i'm not giving up on trading. I'm actually trading the various choices I have. A well paying job with guaranteed income vs a maybe shot at full-time trading with unknown outcome. I'm taking the weighted average of both choices. By doing the full-time job, I'm actually INCREASING my chance of success at trading. As many have mentioned here, when you don't need to trade to put food on the table and cover living expenses, it relieves a lot of pressure. And because I am limited by an hour to an hour half in the morning before going to work, I will need to be very focused and pick the good trades. Perhaps this will force me to develop longer term systems too. So a win win. We'll see...
Good decision. After quitting my corporate day job, I consulted part time until 2009, before going full time trading in 2010. Looking forward to have you join our rank in a few years. Best wishes.
I know the source of all of my errors! Short bias!! Stupid! Shorting in one of the strongest markets. I short directly or indirectly by shorting NQ, YM, and buying TVIX. As soon as I started long things turned around. not sure why I'm fighting this strong market... Feel like a loser. Not only did I lost money but missed out on some of the greatest moves!
I have noticed over the years that some traders are strongly predisposed to a personality trait that has them consistently fading any market. They want to fight the market. In the 1990's there was a very big, quite prominent Bond local futures trader by the name of Chip Kenyon. He gave a brief seminar talk at a CBOT event in Chicago, and I made sure to attend. He told the story of him building up his account to the point where he was ready to stop leasing his Full Membership and buy it outright. In essence, he went on to explain how he gave back his year in one day "cannonballing" the market. He went on to call the behavior a "disease", and vowed to never do that again. He was just going to stop fighting the market. In several weeks time since that vow, he had quite impressively recovered that disastrous day. He bought the Full Seat, and he concluded that since that quite painful lesson his trading really took off. He was still at that time very bitter about 'the complete waste' that day was. At the time of that speech, he was known around the pit as a trader who would take a 2500 lot. And there were only a couple locals like that around.
In reviewing my performance, I just noticed SPY returned 15.3% CAGR since Jan 2009, coincided with my going full time, speaking of timing and luck! It would be difficult to lose money if one traded with a long bias. However, it is anyone's guess when the train will stop. So be careful if you decide to go long now. Regards,
This market never goes down!!! WTF?!! Every time I short, all the freakin dip buyers come in and rip it up. So, then I went long and got out. Then toward end of day I figure it's too high. Mistakes. Put on a small short position then it rips up! It's never going down! Stupid me to think the Fed will ever like it crash...